She Walks in Beauty Page 4

  i get that reassuring feeling

  of wanting to escape

  I’m Going to Georgia

  FOLK SONG

  I once loved a young man as dear as my life,

  And ofttimes I told him I’d make him his wife.

  I’ve fulfilled my promise, I made him his wife

  And see what I’ve come to by being his wife.

  I’m going to Georgia,

  I’m going to roam,

  And if ever I get there,

  I’ll make it my home.

  My cheeks were once red, as red as a rose,

  But now they are as pale as the lilies that grow;

  My children all hungry and crying for bread;

  My husband, a drunkard, Lord, I wish I were dead!

  Come, all young ladies, take warning by me:

  Never plant your affections on a green, young tree;

  For the leaves will wither and the buds they will die;

  Some young man might fool you as one has fooled I.

  They’ll hug you, they’ll kiss you, they’ll tell you more lies

  Than the cross-ties on the railroad or the stars in the skies;

  They’ll tell you they love you like stars in the West

  But along comes corn whiskey; they love it the best.

  Go, build me a cabin on the mountain so high

  Where the wild birds and turtledove can hear my sad cry.

  A Type of Loss

  INGEBORG BACHMANN

  Jointly used: seasons, books and music.

  The keys, the tea cups, the breadbasket, sheets

  and a bed.

  A dowry of words, of gestures, brought along,

  used, spent.

  Social manners observed. Said. Done. And always

  the hand extended.

  With winter, a Vienna septet and with summer I’ve

  been in love.

  With maps, a mountain hut, with a beach and

  a bed.

  A cult filled with dates, promises made

  as if irrevocable,

  enthused about Something and pious before Nothing,

  (—the folded newspapers, cold ashes, the slip of paper

  with a jotted note)

  fearless in religion, as the church was this bed.

  From the seascape came my inexhaustible painting.

  From the balcony, the people, my neighbors,

  were there to be greeted.

  By the fireplace, in safety, my hair had its most exceptional

  color.

  The doorbell ringing was the alarm for my joy.

  It was not you I lost,

  but the world.

  On Monsieur’s Departure

  QUEEN ELIZABETH I

  I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

  I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

  I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

  I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

  I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,

  Since from myself another self I turned.

  My care is like my shadow in the sun,

  Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,

  Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.

  His too familiar care doth make me rue it.

  No means I find to rid him from my breast,

  Till by the end of things it be supprest.

  Some gentler passion slide into my mind,

  For I am soft and made of melting snow;

  Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.

  Let me or float or sink, be high or low.

  Or let me live with some more sweet content,

  Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

  The Eaten Heart

  from The Knight of Curtesy

  “Make it sweet and delicate to eat

  For it is for my lady bright.

  If she guessed what was in this meat

  Her heart would not be light.”

  The lord’s words were truly spoke

  The meat of woe and death

  The lady did not know it though

  And followed him across the hearth.

  And when the lord sat down to eat

  His lady at his side

  The heart was served upon the plate

  But it had grief inside.

  “Madame, eat of this,” he said,

  “For it is dainty and pleasant.”

  The lady ate and was not dismayed

  For of spice there was not want.

  When the lady had eaten well

  To her the lord said there,

  “His heart you have eaten every morsel

  Of your knight to whom you gave a lock of hair.

  “As you can see, your knight is dead;

  Madame, I tell you certainly.

  That is his heart on which you fed.

  Madame, at last we all must die.”

  When the lady heard the words he said

  She cried, “My heart shall rend

  Alas, I ever saw this day

  Now, please God may my life end.”

  Up she rose with heart of woe

  And straight to her chamber went;

  She confessed devoutly so

  That shortly she received the sacrament.

  Mourning in her bed she lay

  So pitiful was her moan.

  “Alas, my own dear love,” she said,

  “Since you are dead, my life is gone.

  “Have I taken your heart in my body

  That meat to me is dear;

  For sorrow alas I now must die

  A noble knight without fear

  “With me thy heart shall surely die

  I have received the sacrament;

  All earthly food I shall deny

  In woe and pain, my life is spent.”

  Her complaint was piteous to hear.

  “Goodbye my lord forever;

  I die as true a wife to you

  As any could be ever

  “I am chaste of the knight of curtesy

  And wrongfully are we brought to confusion

  I am chaste of him and he of me

  And of all other save you alone.

  “My lord, you were to blame

  For making me eat his heart;

  But since it is buried in my body

  I shall never eat any other meat.

  “I have now received eternal food

  Earthly meat will I never touch

  Now realize what you have done

  Have mercy on me—and believe.”

  With that the lady in front of all in sight

  Yielded up her spirit with a moan;

  The high god of heaven almighty

  On us have mercy—every one.

  My life closed twice before its close—

  EMILY DICKINSON

  My life closed twice before its close—

  It yet remains to see

  If Immortality unveil

  A third event to me

  So huge, so hopeless to conceive

  As these that twice befell.

  Parting is all we know of heaven,

  And all we need of hell.

  When We Two Parted

  GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

  When we two parted

  In silence and tears,

  Half broken-hearted

  To sever for years,

  Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

  Colder thy kiss;

  Truly that hour foretold

  Sorrow to this.

  The dew of the morning

  Sunk chill on my brow—

  It felt like the warning

  Of what I feel now.

  Thy vows are all broken,

  And light is thy fame;

  I hear thy name spoken,

  And share in its shame.

  They name thee before me,

  A knell to mine ear;

  A shudder comes o’er me—

  Why wert thou so dear?

&n
bsp; They know not I knew thee,

  Who knew thee too well:—

  Long, long shall I rue thee,

  Too deeply to tell.

  In secret we met—

  In silence I grieve,

  That thy heart could forget,

  Thy spirit deceive.

  If I should meet thee

  After long years,

  How should I greet thee?—

  With silence and tears.

  Well, I Have Lost You

  EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

  Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;

  In my own way, and with my full consent.

  Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely

  Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.

  Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping

  I will confess; but that’s permitted me;

  Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping

  Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.

  If I had loved you less or played you slyly

  I might have held you for a summer more,

  But at the cost of words I value highly,

  And no such summer as the one before.

  Should I outlive this anguish—and men do—

  I shall have only good to say of you.

  What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)

  EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

  What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

  I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

  Under my head till morning; but the rain

  Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

  Upon the glass and listen for reply,

  And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

  For unremembered lads that not again

  Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

  Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,

  Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

  Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

  I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

  I only know that summer sang in me

  A little while, that in me sings no more.

  “No, Thank You, John”

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

  I never said I loved you, John:

  Why will you teaze me day by day,

  And wax a weariness to think upon

  With always “do” and “pray”?

  You know I never loved you, John;

  No fault of mine made me your toast:

  Why will you haunt me with a face as wan

  As shows an hour-old ghost?

  I dare say Meg or Moll would take

  Pity upon you, if you’d ask:

  And pray don’t remain single for my sake

  Who can’t perform that task.

  I have no heart?—Perhaps I have not;

  But then you’re mad to take offence

  That I don’t give you what I have not got:

  Use your own common sense.

  Let bygones be bygones:

  Don’t call me false, who owed not to be true:

  I’d rather answer “No” to fifty Johns

  Than answer “Yes” to you.

  Let’s mar our pleasant days no more,

  Song-birds of passage, days of youth:

  Catch at today, forget the days before:

  I’ll wink at your untruth.

  Let us strike hands as hearty friends;

  No more, no less; and friendship’s good:

  Only don’t keep in view ulterior ends,

  And points not understood

  In open treaty. Rise above

  Quibbles and shuffling off and on:

  Here’s friendship for you if you like; but love,—

  No, thank you, John.

  when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story

  GWENDOLYN BROOKS

  ——And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes

  on a Wednesday and a Saturday,

  And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday—

  When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed;

  Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon

  Looking off down the long street

  To nowhere,

  Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation

  And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why?

  And if-Monday-never-had-to-come—

  When you have forgotten that, I say,

  And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,

  And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;

  And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,

  That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner

  To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles

  Or chicken and rice

  And salad and rye bread and tea

  And chocolate chip cookies—

  I say, when you have forgotten that,

  When you have forgotten my little presentiment

  That the war would be over before they got to you;

  And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,

  And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end

  Bright bedclothes,

  Then gently folded into each other—

  When you have, I say, forgotten all that,

  Then you may tell,

  Then I may believe

  You have forgotten me well.

  The End

  ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

  The last thing of you is a doll, velveteen and spangle,

  silk douponi trousers, Ali Baba slippers that curl up at the toes,

  tinsel moustache, a doll we had made in your image

  for our wedding with one of me which you have.

  They sat atop our coconut cake. We cut it

  into snowy squares and fed each other, while God watched.

  All other things are gone now: the letters boxed,

  pajama-sized shirts bagged for Goodwill, odd utensils

  farmed to graduating students starting first apartments

  (citrus zester, apple corer, rusting mandoline),

  childhood pictures returned to your mother,

  trinkets sorted real from fake and molten

  to a single bar of gold, untruths parsed,

  most things unsnarled, the rest let go

  save the doll, which I find in a closet,

  examine closely, then set into a hospitable tree

  which I drive past daily for weeks and see it still there,

  in the rain, in the wind, fading in the sun,

  no one will take it, it will not blow away,

  in the rain, in the wind,

  it holds tight to its branch,

  then one day, it is gone.

  MARRIAGE

  GETTING MARRIED WAS THE BEST DECISION I have ever made. Not only is my husband the most wonderful person imaginable, but at the time, it was such a relief to have it all over with! Even though I was a first-year law student determined to concentrate on my professional options, getting married took over my life. To be honest, it had always been a major preoccupation for me, my friends and cousins. We spent countless childhood hours planning imaginary weddings. Would we elope? Could we bring our ponies? What would our bridesmaids wear, especially if they were on their ponies. When I hit my twenties and people started getting married for real, weekends were consumed with bridal showers—complete with skits, songs, and the occasional stripper. There were endless fittings for hideous dresses, but also lots of laughs and backstage drama. My wedding was no exception. Fortunately, I had a fantastic time, and life has only gotten better because I have someone to share it with.

  Each marriage is as unique as the two people in it, but universal too. Getting married is an act of hope and optimism—an affirmation of life. Every marriage, like every life, goes through its ups and downs, and the institution o
f marriage is challenged by personal and historical inequities. Yet the pursuit of love and the strength of a lifelong commitment remain their own rewards and the foundation of much of our social order.

  Most of these poems are romantic, realistic, wise, and funny. It’s hard not to be swept off one’s feet reading Christopher Marlowe’s poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” The romantic ideal underlying marriage is embodied by the excerpt from The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney. Its most famous line, “My true love hath my heart and I have his,” is echoed by e. e. cummings four hundred years later when he writes, “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in/my heart).”

  I have tried to include poems that examine different aspects of the marital relationship. Comparing a passage from the Book of Proverbs about the virtuous wife to Lady Mary Chudleigh’s warning in “To the Ladies” gives us a historical perspective on the relative status of husbands and wives. Not surprisingly, women come up short. There are also grim, loveless depictions like Robert Lowell’s “To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage.” Even more chilling is Robert Browning’s classic “My Last Duchess,” in which the fact that the husband has murdered his wife is gradually revealed.

  At least Ogden Nash and Rudyard Kipling bring a little levity to the subject. In “A Word to Husbands” and “The Female of the Species,” they complain loudly that women dominate the home and everyone who enters it. An excerpt from John Milton’s Paradise Lost takes us back to the beginning of the “vain contest” between husband and wife, which he describes as a struggle that shall have no end.

  Fortunately, however, most poems about marriage celebrate companionship, passion, and the oneness of two people in a long-term partnership. “Letter from My Wife” is one of many poems written from prison by Nazim Hikmet, a Turkish poet jailed for his political activities. Filled with longing and the desire to be reunited before death, these poems make the reader’s heart ache. Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin’s poem “To Paula in Late Spring” reflects on the memories of a lifetime of love.